There is no shame in wishful thinking. There I said it. Realism and honesty aside, we can all use a little more wishful thinking in our lives. Just think about how many people you cursed out on your commute to work this week. I don’t even have enough fingers and toes to count how many I cursed out this morning, and I’m still on my commute! Now, what if you had a little more hope for that person you just cursed out? Here’s what I mean: if we were a little more hopeful for that person who was driving that cut us off, would you have cursed him/her out? Better example, what about the job interview you have been waiting on? If you were a little more wishful in your thinking, do you think you would have settled on abandoning your career and accepted a job you innately hate? We have such little wishful thinking in our lives that our expectations are limited by our turmoil! and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. – Romans 5:5 The Apostle Paul says there is no shame in having hope (wishful thinking) and the fact that you have hope and ideals for a present and future do no harm. Wishful thinking, and I don’t mean wishful thinking as in having delusions of becoming a princess out of a Disney movie because that’s not wishful, just hopelessly delusion and fantastic, is really about going through life and seeing the goal God placed in your heart despite the odds and challenges. I know for a fact how difficult it is to be hopeful after enduring so much in life, but those enduring moments are exactly the moments we need to be the most hopeful. I don’t tell you to have hope blindly or randomly so you can feel good about your failures and shortcomings. I tell you to have hope knowing and understanding that despite all your shortcomings and failures God is pouring Himself into your hearts and minds to be the catalyst of hope through your difficulties. If we didn’t need any hope in our lives, there wouldn’t have been a need for God to sacrifice His Son in a humiliating set of events– naked and displayed along the side of a busy highway like billboard advertising. It’s time to change the way we think and have more wishful thinking, to be hopeful of a future poured out into you directly by God through His Spirit. This is the only hope we need to fight the impossible fight of life.